


A Kingdom for a Stage

by Beabaseball (beabaseball)



Series: O For a Muse of Fire [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Murderers, Non-Consensual Touching, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-22 03:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13158330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beabaseball/pseuds/Beabaseball
Summary: Sidestories fromAnd Monarchs to Beholdwhich will not make it into the main storyline. Mostly written by request on tumblr, or deleted scenes.Includes why Nightwing has a strict no-engagement rule about Deathstroke, Stephanie's backstory, and what-if canon crossover with Young Justice (Cartoon).





	1. Stephanie, age 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One night, in the basement of a rich little church, Stephanie told Tim she ran away from home.

Her dad never gave her a ton of choices. Not real ones. There were choices like what moves she wanted to make when he played one of his weird games with her, and there were choices like what she wanted for dinner off a menu, or ones like, ‘are you too sick to go to school today?’ which she never was, because the alternative was staying home _._

The first time her dad got arrested, she finally got a choice all her own, and she just couldn’t choose:

Who did she hate more? The cops, her dad, or _everything_?

Which sounded really dramatic, even to her, but it was late afternoon, and she was in her room, screaming and crying on her bed while her mom waited in the kitchen for her to calm down. It’d felt like the most serious situation in the world, and the whole world was definitely in on it.

(Now she realized she just should’ve hated everything and been done with it.)

She didn’t get a choice when dad got out of jail and started trying to bring her along on jobs. It wasn’t long after the first kid heroes appeared on the other side of the country. Because of course it wasn’t.

Dad’d taken one look at the news reports about some kid on the other side of the country, running around in tights, helping his maybe-possibly-they-don’t-look- _that_ -much-alike dad do… stuff?

Vigilanting was a whole nother type of criminal, designed for whole other sorts of cities. News of vigilantes reached Gotham, because national news was always nicer than the local stuff. Most people at least watched it for entertainment, if there wasn’t anything else good on TV.

Vigilantes were the kind of criminal people cheered for. Steph sort of envied them—the vigilantes. The kid hero in Star City, whose mentor was always caught smiling at him and slapping his back on camera. The one from Central, whose partner was less camera-shy. They even did interviews sometimes, eating hotdogs and laughing together for the whole world to see. Her dad, though?

He’d taken one look at the TV and sort of reared up. Looked kind of _offended_ , nevermind he’d never met Flash or Green Arrow or literally any hero, _nevermind_ Steph was at least three years younger than the bright yellow smudges on the screen. Dad reared up, made a face like someone had come into their apartment and pissed on the rug, and said, “well if _that’s_ how they want to play it.”

(he’d taught her how to lockpick and made her sit in the car when he went out and stole things. Otherwise, not much changed, except that all the things they’d done her whole life? —which she had by then realized were things that like no one else did—He wanted to call those things ‘practice,’ now.)

(He wanted to call her ‘Kid Clue.’)

–

There was a bar they went to.

Which sounded exactly as bad as it was.

The oldest she’d ever gone with him? Twelve.

Who were the other people in the bar? Literally the exact sort of people you’d expect a second-rate gimmick criminal like Cluemaster to associate with.

But it wasn’t a Joker Joint. She had to give him that. It was the only thing she would give him.

It was not a Joker joint, because small-time as most of the customers were? They weren’t small-time enough to think getting down with the clown was a good idea. In fact, the place was nowhere near a known Joker hangout. That didn’t mean much with the man himself—Joker went where he pleased; not like anyone could stop him if he didn’t want them to—but the distance did mean the likelihood of him showing up was way lower _._ Especially when the last rumors of him were from a vacation in Arkham, where he’d been assigned to ever since the _normal_ prison they’d tried to hold him in had… experienced the Joker being bored.

Their bar wasn’t anything like what Steph’d heard of Joker Joints. It was less cold, less _sticky_ , less—something. There were definitely less metas. Mobsters? Sure. Thugs? Sure. People in bright costumes? Sure. Metas? The only one Steph could remember had been thrown out on the pavement before he could finish growing out his arm spikes.

The bar was a small wooden thing tucked in West-Central Gotham, far enough north that they couldn’t see the bridge to Arkham. There were booths along the walls, a bar across from the entrance, and tables everywhere else. The lighting always ran orange and the bathroom really needed a mold treatment, but the place was warm and dry. The heating system was the best investment the owners had ever made; it cut Gotham’s cold, wet air, and left it huffing at the door.

Riddler hung out there. Gossip monger of lower Gotham, same as how Vicky Vale was for the rest of it.

Riddler was the only reason Steph almost looked forward to going to the bar—because while her dad would plop down in the middle of the bar and lean over to his buddies, order beer, and play the lotto, Stephanie would slip over to Riddler’s corner, find a seat, and stay there until it was time to go.

To get on the Riddler’s good side, you only had to remember one thing:

He was so bored that as long as you had a good story for him, you were his best friend.

‘A Good Story’ could include sixth grader drama, he was _so bored._

His crimes were few and far between, because he was always waiting, watching, trying to find the most difficult one to possibly pull. Everyone knew the big crimes took some time and foresight to pull off, but what stalled _Riddler_ was all the time it took to just get a whiff of a challenge. Comparatively, it took no time at all for him to devise all the little hints and clues to lay out, all the ways he could tip people off to whatever his big master plan was. No one ever caught on, but he always held out hope.

Riddler was the kind of guy Steph’s father aspired to be. Which was probably why he was so weird whenever Steph went to sit with Riddler. Was her dad jealous? Was he pleased? She didn’t know. She didn’t care. It got her on the other side of the room as him for a while, and no one really started anything in the Riddler’s corner, so if she just hung out around him she wasn’t going to get caught in any bar fights or get attacked or anything.

It wasn’t that Riddler was actually physically dangerous, but there was a certain amount of respect held for those criminals who never really got caught. His gang hanging around probably helped, but still. She couldn’t imagine anyone throwing a chair at Riddler’s head without very quickly apologizing for it.

Riddler was just off enough, just clever enough, that he’d made it into Gotham’s tiers beside the Freaks.

Riddler got his drinks for free, because some nights it seemed like half the patrons came just to get as close as they could to a Gotham celebrity without getting ganked.

There _were_ other big names who might show up at the bar—Sportsmaster came in occasionally, though much less since his wife took the fall—but most of the big-name guys had their own places in the city to unwind, and most of them didn’t tolerate gawkers the way Riddler could.

Most of the gang bosses and mobsters had their own private pads, or kicked it at the Iceburg Lounge if they were feeling social, but it was never social enough to tolerate snooping.

Even if there were people who still wanted to talk to Two-Face despite his past as the prosecuting attorney who’d gutted Falcone, Dent was still always two intrusive thoughts away from a one-in-two chance of blowing up whatever place he’d started haunting down by City Hall.

Joker schmoozed around, but always seemed to be found by people trying to purposefully avoid him, so by the same token, anyone crazy enough to want to find where he went in his down-time was never destined to find him.

The Bat wasn’t exactly social. If you wanted to talk to him, best bet was saying so in a quiet whisper in a dark alley, and they just waiting a week or so for either him or his kid to find you—though you had to have a reason for wanting to talk to them, or they’d consider it a wasted trip, and most of those bodies ended up hanging by their necks from lampposts or scared into never talking about the night again.

Poison Ivy had a few consistent haunts, but mostly walked unpaved alleys. She didn’t really care to spend time with humans. Being ignored or warned off was how most people left her. The ones who kept pursuing usually ended up as organic fertilizer.

Riddler?

He’d sit off on his own in a little broken booth, watching all the other patrons of the bar go about their business while he sat and drank something amber and cold, tapping his cane against the floor.

If you talked to him, he wanted to hear something worthwhile, but the worst he’d do would be whack you upside the head with the cane and send you stumbling backwards. There were always a few of his followers around, ready to drag someone off or shove them out the door, if the person was really irritating him, but there were no sudden, violent executions. There were still drunk brawls and reputation fights on the floor and in the alley behind the place, and if you listened you could hear a slew of plans for heists and revenge and honor killings, but it was a quiet bar, especially compared to others in Gotham.

Riddler was part of that.

He’d started allowing her to sit nearby even when she didn’t have any gossip after she’d claimed he was tapping his cane in code—

—and then hadn’t had the heart to tell him she was making a joke.

He’d looked so _happy_ that someone had noticed. He bought her apple juice and a plate of fries, and started quizzing her on—well—something that had eventually lead to Egyptology? Which she knew nothing about. So she’d just listened. 

He seemed a little less bored when he was talking. All the times before when she’d come to the bar and he was there, he’d been silent except for information swaps and idle threats. She realized, her third night there after she’d guessed he talked in morse code, that if he wasn’t talking or being given news, all people seemed to ask about was how he’d pulled off that diamond heist, where did you put the goods, you threw _what_ in the river.   
  
(“Once I’d won, it lost interest to me,” he’d said, blank-faced and shrugging.

 “It still down there?” the questioner said.

Riddler rolled his eyes and said, “Have you ever seen a catfish?”

He’d grinned and called her ‘Queen Clue’ when she asked if there was supposed to be a space between ‘cat’ and ‘fish.’ Then, he turned and tapped his chin, saying, “I wonder if anyone’s tried to steal something _from_ Catwoman.” )

–

One night, there were cops outside. Loudly outside. It wasn’t that unusual—the city was the city, and the cops tried to patrol it. But there were _three_ dispatch areas for each area of Gotham, and varying levels of crookedness for each one.

The Commissioner had taken the north-most dispatch and made it headquarters for the Major Crimes Unit, a group of his handpicked cops. They followed cases under his direct supervision, slowly carving a path through Gotham, one street at a time. Rumor had it (according to Riddler) the current Commish had always been a stickler cop, even after being forcibly transferred to the GCPD, but having his infant son thrown off that bridge—well. He’d been hacking his way through the criminal underworld and rooting out corruption in the police force as a one-man army. North Gotham’s almost-clean police force was his current testament, even if it’d cost him a child and a White Knight D.A. to get there.

Central Gotham was a bit different.

The cops didn’t come into the bar. They’d been paid well to keep out, and there were any number of other bars they could easily go to, so they never came close to coming in _the_ bar. That didn’t mean the whole room didn’t pause for a moment when there was commotion coming from the alley to the left, loud enough for them to hear.

“Fuck Gordon, I’ll kill him _myself_ if I have to put up with this shit anymore—”

There was a crack, a gunshot, a shout, and then not anything else.

It hadn’t been much to hear, but it’d been something.

While one or two heads got up to go investigate, someone in the back snorted and said, “Gotham’s finest.”

Steph nodded, even though she hadn’t been addressed. No one had been addressed, except maybe the ceiling, or something beyond it.

The cops never came inside the bar.

The people who did come inside the bar were crooked enough. They didn’t needcops inside, too.

–

Riddler hadn’t been there the night she’d seen Robin.

It was a few months before she turned twelve. A few months before Nightwing first reared his head.

Even without Riddler there to listen to, she claimed her usual corner and played Snake on her dad’s cellphone, planning to keep her head down and wait it out until her dad got tired enough to let her go home.

There wasn’t a mom at home for him to harass when he was drunk, anymore.

…No one noticed Robin until he was standing in front of the bar, knocking on its counter and saying, “Excuse me? I’m looking for a—“ (he glanced down at a piece of paper in his hand) “—Suzie Mengel.”

He was midway through a growth spurt. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and the moment his puberty-cracked voice said the name of the person he was searching for, someone at the far end of the bar shot to their feet and bolted for the door.

“Thanks,” said Robin, smiling at the bartender, still halfway through filling a glass, having said nothing and incriminated no one. “We’ll just go now.”

By the time Suzie Mengel was at the door, he was in the air and bounding after her.

Steph hadn’t recognized Suzie Mengel as a regular, but from that night on, she kept an eye out, just in case. At least, she kept an eye out until her body was found bobbing against one of the beams of the bridge between the central island and Arkham. The last anyone’d seen of her was Robin’s cape flitting over her, obscuring her from view for just a moment before the door slammed shut behind him.

…On the way home that night, her dad skidded on the icy streets and fell on his ass in brown slush along the side of the road. Steph tried to help him up.

He knocked her over, held his face in his hands, and said “Why can’t _you_ be like that?”

…

She stared at him, a hollow place in her stomach, filling up with Gotham snow.

“Sounds like a good one for Riddler.”

(a year later, he went to the bar without her, because Gordon had somehow scrounged up a pair of honest cops who’d figured out a few of Cluemaster’s hints and were hot on his trail. The first place they’d look would be his apartment. So he left her in it, ran to the bar, said, “text me what happens.”

Which was dumb? Super dumb. Banking on the loyalty of single-father-only-daughter bonding.

(What if they _wouldn’t_ leave her alone because she was a kid? Because they were ‘honest cops?’ What if they hadn’t left her alone? Huh, Dad? _Huh?_ )

She packed a backpack and her purple jacket and scarf, scrawled a note, and taped it on the door.

She spent the next hour huddled behind a broken bus bench opposite her apartment, and waiting until the cops entered the building.

She sent a text to her dad.

_on the move. come home asap_.

(She stayed long enough to watch him try and outrun the squad car.

Then, she ran north.)


	2. Why Nightwing has a Strict No-Contact Policy with Deathstroke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> why nightwing has a strict no-contact policy with deathstroke

It was a favor to Ra’s al Ghul. 

Eventually he’d learn that sentence never ended well for him. He told himself that every time he bowed to a whim of his old mentor. Eventually he’d learn, but it still always felt like something small and easy at the time--a dinner meeting to discuss potential future prospects, but with no binding agreement. An exchange of data over a common nuisance with Talia as a go-between. 

A request that Deathstroke the Terminator use his house as a way into a brief assassination. 

Oh, it wouldn’t take place  _ at  _ his house, no need to worry-- but if Deathstroke could simply use him as a door into a party, well, that would minimize danger, and he knew how Bruce always loved to keep Gotham feeling nice and safe. He’d even ask that Deathstroke make it look like an accident, so that no alarm over more high-profile murders in Gotham could be raised. 

Ra’s knew how Bruce felt about that sort of thing. 

( _ Talia  _ knew how Bruce felt about that sort of thing, he thought, and didn’t put it past her to scold her father into some semblance of civility.) 

...but all the same, he’d yet to learn his lesson, and decided a debt was a debt, and he’d never been good at paying debts off. 

So Deathstroke would have a safehouse and stepping off point in Wayne Manor for one night. 

...Deathstroke would  _ not  _ have a safehouse in the Batcave. That was off limits still, and Bruce would stay up all night on vigil if he had to, but aside from the Batcave, Bruce had… recently acquired more to worry about. 

...Dick was twelve, now. Starting to want to venture out on his own. Sometimes he did so without permission. All Bruce could do was try and make sure he kept as safe as he could. Was as trained as he could. Gave him a warning, even though the rule was no one out more than an hour from the manor at night-- 

But it was daytime, and Dick was awake at the breakfast table on the day of the Terminator’s presence, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and pouring milk into his cereal at the big mahogany table. Some splashed out the side of the bowl. 

There were bruises under his nightshirt from the days before. They showed whenever he shifted and his neckline fell or his sleeves rode up. 

There wasn’t any butler to make their guest an omelette or benedict, or even to set out the bowl of cereal before Dick awoke alongside orange juice and bacon.

Dick just blinked his bleary eyes at Deathstroke, and passed down the multigrain animal shapes to him, and dug into his breakfast. 

….he would still be there, munching away in the room, when he heard Deathstroke speaking to his caretaker. 

“I’ve seen what he’s capable of so far; I’m impressed at what you’ve done with him,” the old man said. “How much are you willing to part with him for?” 

And then his blood ran cold. 

\-- 

Dick Grayson was thirteen, and out for his first night after surviving bruised ribs and a bad sprain. He was allowed to run and stay on the rooftops, but only that. Keep an eye out. A baby stake-out, Robin called it, but at least he was outside and feeling the wind whip around him again. 

“Well I was just passing through, but this is a pleasant surprise. Finally let you out of your cage?”

Robin flinched at the voice behind him. 

He didn’t move more than that, though. As if there were a knife at his throat. 

Maybe a knife at his back. He didn’t know. 

He didn’t know why that voice was familiar. 

“There’s better teachers,” the voice came again, and something hot and burning tried to come up Robin’s throat. “Ones who wouldn’t let you get that hurt in the first place. And I happen to know a much easier way to heal.”

“No,” Robin mumbled. 

Now he felt it. A hand on his shoulder, pulling him backwards, closer, until he thought he could feel Deathstroke behind him, voice near his ear. “He’s really got you good in this, hm?”

The grip tightened. 

“I decline your ‘no.’”

...Robin remembered the year before. Talking about cost. Talking about Haly talking about  _ not going to pay the fee,  _ about the price of a life. He thought about hitting the ground, and all his bones popping right back into place, his organs knitting back together, the eye jelly that’d splattered out of his head balling right back up--

There were many horrifying sounds in the Gotham night. Gunshots, or shouts, or sirens. 

The worst to hear of all was a dangerous little Robin, calling out to Batman for help.

\--

Dick Grayson was fifteen. His name was Nightwing now, and his skin no longer crawled when someone stepped behind him. 

...but that hadn’t come fast enough to break Batman of the habit, when his charge would flinch and whip around every time he put a hand on his shoulder, and then wouldn’t stop shaking after stuttering apologies. 

But his name was Nightwing now, and the new Robin had never seen Deathstroke or felt his breath on the back of his neck. He’d never seen his predecessor be anything less than ruthless to anyone who dared approach from behind.

Robin no longer had to go out unsupervised sometimes, now that there were two people who could keep up with a younger member. Now that they had a robin that had to be trained from relative scratch. 

It was also a Robin who didn’t ask many questions, though, just glad to be involved, and alive, and with a home and family, even if one seemed ready to strangle him half the time--

He’d realize, later, that what he’d seen of Nightwing’s temper was just irritation, and not true killing intent. He’d seen Nightwing kill--he’d seen him kill since the first day they met, when Jason floated down a sewer and found himself fished out by masked men sighing how their traps didn’t work on what seemed so much like dead bodies.

...they were helping him, Batman and Nightwing. They were helping him track down the mob that supplied the drugs that killed his mother. The workers and agents who wouldn’t help his family. The people who preyed on street kids that Jason had known before he was sent stumbling into the rivers on a combination of apathy, sickness, and hunger. 

They were helping hunt those people down, making Gotham a better place for kids, and giving the survivors somewhere to go. School, housing, and sanctuary. 

...but mob bosses could anger a lot more than simply the children of a city they ruled. 

They found that out when their infiltration was interrupted, and they found the man-- Lew Moxon--dead in his chair, a sword still in the process of being pulled out of his neck. 

“Oh,” Deathstroke said, “Now this is unexpected.”

Robin thought maybe they could shrug and go, now that their job was done for them, but Nightwing--

Nightwing made a sound like Robin had never heard before, and lunged across the room before Deathstroke could even get another word out. 

He was fifteen, and had only barely hit his growth spurt, and stood no chance against him. 

Deathstroke laughed, and when Nightwing tried to throw him out a window, just held on and dragged the boy down with him. 

It was a week before they found him again, in red armor in a bunker outside Gotham city limits, face bruised and covered with superficial cuts. 

\--

Rules of the Batcave: 

No drugs. No alcohol. Chore list must be upheld. No one allowed outside without warning. No one more than an hour away from each other at any time. 

And Nightwing is never to come into contact with the man known as Deathstroke the Terminator. 


	3. stars

**A snippet of something I thought of last night (a very, very bright night) and put down real quick. Set in early spring of 2012.**

Tim took a step back as Batman advanced towards Dick and Damian where they stood in the shadowed garage entrance of the cave, his cape whipping around him. “Where _were_ you?”

“We just took a drive, B,” Dick said, keeping his voice low and calm. Nothing like Bruce’s at that moment—or what Damian’s voice would’ve been like, judging by the kid’s posture. His shoulders were back and his fists and jaw were both tensed in much the same way as his father’s. It was a little uncanny. Dick stepped between the two, seemingly ignorant or uncaring of the heated looks both Waynes were shooting. He held up the key to one of their many motorcycles, pinching it between his forefinger and thumb. “We were just outside city limits.”

“Your com was down,” Bruce growled, not at all soothed.

“Sorry. I just wanted privacy,” Dick said, still unruffled. He put the key back in his pocket and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll leave a note next time.”

“Next time.” The way Bruce said it wasn’t incredulous, but it was… something. Still tight. “What were you doing outside city limits?”

Tim had to admit, he was pretty curious about that, too. According to Batman, Dick hadn’t made contact for at least two hours before his and Damian’s absence was noticed, and it had been a good hour and a half since then. Jason and Steph wouldn’t have even _near_ finished searching Northern Gotham by now, much less any of the other places that’d been mapped out to scower. Sure, Dick and Damian could focus for a few hours on a _job_ if it required it, but that was with the promise of something sweet on the end of their wait, but beyond the Gotham city limits there was nothing but fields before you hit the highways. What was there out there for them to do, in their civvies, for an hour and a half, much less nearly four hours? Not even hiding bodies took that long, and they wouldn’t have dared do something like that in civvies, not to mention their clothes were still very clean, so—

“Stargazing,” Dick said.

Tim’s brain stopped short.

Bruce’s seemed to as well.

Dick shrugged. Damian’s fists unclenched, and he crossed his arms, looking smug from where he stood behind Dick. “He can navigate by constellations! I thought it was pretty cool. So he was pointing some out to me. It took a lot more effort and time than I thought it would. I mean, I thought it’d be pretty fine, since most days I can find Orion at least, but apparently it’s not the right time of year for that? Or time of night? Or something. So he lectured me a little and started pointing out, like—what were some of them again, Dami? I can’t remember the names.”

Damian huffed and puffed out his chest, eyes closed, and looking proud enough that Tim was pretty sure they should’ve called him Rooster instead of Robin.

Then, before anyone could object, he started to tell them about stars.


	4. jason pov meeting batman

written Aug 30. 2016

* * *

Jason knew what it was to be abandoned.

He knew what it was to be thrown into a wall and lie against it as his father ran out the door; to be tensed at every moment, waiting for a return that never came.

He knew what it was to wander into a cold apartment that smelled like smoke and piss; to find a body ( _“Mom? Mom?”_ ) set full in rigor mortis on the kitchen floor.

He knew what it was to run, cold and breathless, into the night to escape cops who were little better than crooks when they came banging down your door. He knew what it was to stuff your clothing with newspapers and plastic bags, to sneak into the park and huddle inside a tube slide for the night and wake up in the morning drowning in your own sweat. He knew what it was to be hungry, to eat out of dumpsters, to look at the other people in the street and think _is it really so bad if I just took a little? They have enough. I don’t. They have enough. It wouldn’t be so bad if I just took a little. They won’t miss it. They don’t need it like I do._

Jason knew what it was to be nothing. Street scum. Invisible. Helpless.

Only able to crawl and claw and cling onto life. It was all he could do.

No one stopped for the homeless children of Gotham. No one had time to. No one he knew, anyway. He had a few names, now—Poison Ivy. Wayne. Thompkins. Catwoman. But he knew what it was to live without those names. To have no fallback plan, no backup, no one in the world to turn to but the streets of the city herself.

He was lucky.

He knew he was lucky.

He was the luckiest fucking asshole in the world, and Gotham loved him.

She took him amidst a daze of starvation and early-stage hypothermia and led him out of a blizzard and into the sewers. She kept him upright as he staggered through the soiled waters, keeping at bay his half-formed, fraying thoughts; memories of rumors of crocodiles in the sewers, and the slow realization that he wouldn’t have been opposed to meeting one.

But she kept him. She kept him moving, even as the current grabbed him, and he began to sink. Even as he stumbled and groaned. Even as the sewers lit up with an artificial sun that should not have existed.

She led him to the shadow that grew beneath the city, cast by her brightest light.

She led him to the man who stood like a dark pillar, stood like Goliath. Stood like death itself—and death itself bent down and lifted Jason from the sewer waters, wrapped him in black cloth, and carried him gently away.

  
Death himself had a heartbeat, and was warm, and for the first time in forever, Jason smelled something like fresh bread.

He was bathed—he had the will but not the strength to fight anymore, the last of him had been taken in his journey through the sewers, in keeping his head above the water, in the realization that after three years, you only had to lose once and this might be the night he didn’t survive—he was bathed. Clothed. Given hot broth and crackers, and a warm blanket and heating pad laid over his legs, over his bruises, over the new bandages that wrapped over injuries he’d forgotten he even had on his arms and face and neck and—

And death was a man with blue eyes who spoke very, very softly, and said, “Son.”

Like it was just a word. Like the way old, old men on T.V. said it. Like the way no one ever really said it, not to him. Like the way it was said with one hand on Jason’s shoulder and the other at his knee, nonthreatening, and the first safe physical contact he’d had in how many months?

He wanted to recoil. He wanted to lean in. He never wanted to move again. He wanted to rest. He wanted the haze to stop.

“Son,” Death said. “Tell me who did this to you.”


End file.
